Netscape: UNITY AND DIVERSITY IN THE BODY OF CHRIST

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expect it to have any life. In Colossians 1:18 Paul says, "[Christ] is also the head of the body, the church...." Whenever Christ is referred to as the Head of the church in the New Testament, it's always in the sense of the mind, the spiritual life, the leadership, or the direction of the church. When a human body loses its mind and its spirit, it ceases to be a living body. It still has physical structure, but it doesn't have life. It's still physically organized, but it's no longer a living organism. In the Upper Room Discourse the Lord Jesus taught his disciples the same basic truth about the church using another picture: "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing." (John 15:5.) A severed branch is unproductive and dead. That's why the New Testament teaches that we are in Christ and he is in us. He isn't just with his church, he is in his church, and his church is in him-we are totally identified with him in the body. All of us together are the church, an organic whole. We're the living manifestation of Jesus Christ that pulsates with the eternal life of God. He functions in the world through us. That's why Paul often describes the church as "those who are in Christ." In the last message I said the New Testament views the church not as an institution but as an organism. Christ is our invisible Head, and we are his visible body on earth. So how is this organic unity achieved? How did we become a part of this body? That's the message of verse 13: "We were all baptized by one Spirit." Our spiritual baptism by means of the Holy Spirit occurred at our conversion to repentant faith. At that time the Holy Spirit entered us and gave us new life, making our bodies temples of God. So all of us who have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ have experienced this once-and-for-all baptism. This baptism is not a matter of having a certain level of spiritual maturity, achieving some advanced spiritual state, or receiving a second blessing. Remember, this letter was sent to a church that was badly divided by factions. Paul called them a carnal church. They were guilty of every kind of sin. These people belonged to Christ, but they weren't being obedient to the command of Ephesians 5:18 to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit, or to be controlled by the Holy Spirit. It's tragically possible to belong to the body of Christ and be born again, but to live as if our bodies didn't belong to him. The effects on people around us are horrible if we choose to live that way. But in spite of that, Paul says that we were all baptized into one body. That's his central point in this verse. It is our baptism with or by the one Spirit that makes the church one body. There are no semi-Christians or partial members of Christ's body. There are no spiritually elite members, and verse 13 makes clear that racial and social diversity doesn't prevent incorporation into this one body. That's the great news. Now Paul is going to illustrate this theme of unity and diversity in the body of Christ with a unique examination of the human body in verses 14-26. And he is going to address these two separate sinful tendencies I mentioned that we find at work in our hearts as we evaluate our own place in the church and our individual spiritual gifting. This is a rather silly section of Scripture. The humor here is goofy. Paul has talking hands and feet and heads and eyes in conversation with each other. I have never considered the apostle Paul to be one of the great comedic writers in the Bible. I can't think of any other part of the Scriptures that Paul wrote that's funny. He's intense and passionate and a great scholar, but a humorist he is not! But there's wonderful humor here. We have a talking foot and ear who feel jealously inferior to a hand and an eye, and they threaten to secede from the body, leaving it unable to walk or hear. Then we have an eye and a head who feel arrogantly superior to the hand and the foot. They think they can get along just fine without them. As I worked through this whole discussion of feet and hands and eyeballs, I thought of the work of Terry Gilliam, the animator who worked with Monty Python. You may remember Terry Gilliam's huge cartoon feet and hands and so on. This section is very Python-esque. I found out last week that the apostle Paul may have had the help of a comic source in what he was imagining, because the Roman writer Livy tells of a story that came from the fifth century BC in which the rest of the body got really frustrated with the stomach because all it did was lie there and accept all the food that they gave it. They started feeling that the stomach wasn't pulling its weight, so they decided to teach it a lesson to get it to do more for the good of the body. They went on strike against the stomach and refused to put food in it. It worked well-so well that the body died. THE PROBLEM OF FEELING INFERIOR Let's look at the first problem Paul talks about: feeling inferior. This is one of the reasons some Christians never express their spiritual gifts in ministry. Look at verses 14-19: For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body," it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body," it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired. And if they were all
one member, where would the body be? In verses 15-16, twice we see the statement "I am not a part of the body." The perception that they don't really need me or I have nothing to contribute represents the temptation to believe that I really have no gifts or abilities that are worthwhile. So I sit back and let others do the work of ministry. That attitude of the foot and the ear may reflect the sense of some people in our body. You may feel that you don't really matter in our church, that your gifting is inferior and insignificant when compared to that of other people. The foot and the ear, if we look carefully at the analogy, are jealous of the prominence of the hand and the eye. Look at it from their perspective. All a foot can do is support the rest of the body when it stands up and then cooperate in the body's walking around. And the foot is rarely allowed out in public; it's always covered up with socks and shoes and sort of kept hidden away. Think about the ear. It's nothing more than a receptor, just waiting for sound waves to arrive, and it's not a very attractive receptor at that, so we cover it up with hair or hang attractive jewelry on it to try to make it look better than it really is. No wonder it feels inferior! Neither the foot nor the ear believes it makes much of a contribution in contrast to the hand and the eye. These are a couple of tremendous contributors to the good of the body. The hand gets to touch anything it wants, pick things up and move them around, use tools. When a vote is taken in a meeting, no one ever says, "Raise your foot"; it's always, "Raise your hand." You can make your own list of why the hand is so superior to the foot. And the eye gets to see everything it wants, watch TV, and so on, and it is able to close at night and rest for a good night's sleep. But Paul makes the point in verse 17 that such thinking is ridiculous. If everybody felt that way in the church, the body would be just one big eye, which could see terrifically well, but it wouldn't be able to hear anything. Or if the body was one giant ear, it would hear very well but it wouldn't be able to smell anything. Paul is parodying those of us who say, "I don't have a certain spiritual gift, so I'm not really a part of the church," or, "My gift is second-rate and unimportant. I've got nothing to offer. So why should I participate?" This section makes clear that in reality everybody is needed, and disclaiming that responsibility doesn't remove it. Drawing back from functioning as part of the body doesn't make us any less a part of the body. Paul says this twice, at the end of verse 15 and at the end of verse 16. There are no inferior or insignificant members of the body of Christ. We saw in verses 1-11 that every Christian has been given spiritual gifts, which are supernatural capacities to serve others in the body. And verse 18 reminds us that God is the one who gifted and placed the members in the body as he wills. So the quieter, less sensational working gifts, such as helps and giving and mercy, are just as important in the overall scheme of things as the more public speaking gifts or leading gifts. I know men and women in the body here at PBC who have discovered how God has spiritually gifted them, and because of those gifts they have, how much loved they are, who quietly serve in obscurity, faithfully exercising gifts like faith and discernment through fervent intercessory prayer for others in the body. People use gifts of encouragement, exhortation, and wisdom in one-on-one relationships, in small group settings. Those "feet" and "ears" are just as important to the good of the whole here as the more prominent "hands" and "eyes." THE PROBLEM OF FEELING SUPERIOR Now beginning in verse 20 Paul is going to address the opposite problem, which is just as ridiculous and dangerous to the health of the body as the first one is. It's the problem of feeling superior to others around us. Look at verses 20-26: But now there are many members, but one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you"; or again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary; and those members of the body, which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our unseemly members come to have more abundant seemliness, whereas our seemly members have no need of it. But God has so composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked, that there should be no division in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. In verse 21 the statement "I have no need of you" occurs twice. The perception is that we don't really need other people to accomplish ministry, because we're so highly qualified. This is pride, independence, an attitude of exclusivity. It brings us back to Monty Python and the absolute silliness of a self-important eye and head telling a hand and foot that they can get along just fine without them. That is self-deluded arrogance. You can imagine the eye and the head saying, "We don't need the motor skills of you distant members. We can see and think and talk and eat and hear. What essential contributions do you have to offer? We combine the higher senses, the cognitive skills." I have this vision of two feet and two hands taking them seriously and, as in Monty Python, skittering off in different directions, leaving the body sitting there with no hands or feet all day long. About dinner time it realizes it's in big trouble-how is it going to get what it needs to survive? This issue of autonomy reminded me of a conversation I had last fall with the football coach at Los Altos High School, where our son Micah plays football. Coach Moser was talking about how difficult it is to get kids to come out for team sports like football, basketball, and volleyball, but how amazingly successful the club sports are in a wealthy area like Los Altos. Club sports are golf
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